


This Vale Of Tears

by LilyChenAppreciationSociety



Category: The Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Gen, Getting Out Of Idris As Fast As Possible, Grief/Mourning, Lord of Shadows spoilers, Shadowhunters Don't Have Great Emotional Health As A Society, The Wild Hunt Helps Everyone, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 09:00:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11078319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyChenAppreciationSociety/pseuds/LilyChenAppreciationSociety
Summary: Post Lord of Shadows follow-up for the Blackthorn kids and those around them as they try to get to safety and mourn what they have lost.





	This Vale Of Tears

It was Helen who got them out of Idris. Helen who first realized how dangerous the situation around them was becoming, Helen who pulled them to their feet and pulled them together and saved them.

Julian refused to leave Livvy’s body, so Mark helped carry her corpse out onto the chaotic streets. Aline led, using force of personality and her mother’s name to force them through the line of guards around the Gard. Dru held up the still shivering Ty and Kit hovered trying to look helpful but instead just coming across as shellshocked. He kept running into people.

Diana and Cristina and Emma were running security, weapons out, keeping threats at bay, shielding the half faeries and the dead girl in their midst from view. If Mark and Helen had been getting terrible looks before, now they were the focus of undiluted hatred. The Blackthorns had brought evil amongst their midst, and they were probably going to be arrested as soon as everyone started thinking right again. It was best to get to safety before the hubbub settled down.

“We need to leave,” Julian whispered, “We need to get Tavvy and go.”

“Where?” Helen asked, “They’ll find us. We should go back to the Penhallows and wait for Jia.”

Emma snarled, sounding like a demon in the night. “Waiting for the Clave never works. Robert was our best chance and he’s dead. I don’t know politics, but I can’t imagine things are going to shake out well for us.” She jumped back, out of the way of a fully armoured warrior sprinting up the street toward the Gard

“Livvy…” Ty mumbled, and Julian reached over to wrap a hand around his limp wrist, the closest thing to comfort he could manage while keeping them moving.

“It’s okay, baby,” Julian promised, to the ashen Dru as well as his little brother. “We’re going to be fine.

Diana had been mostly silent up until that point, blood stained and contemplative as they traipsed down the streets, hurrying along to Diana’s Arrow where Tavvy and the Lightwood-Bane children were tucked away. Now, she spoke up.

“We are, because we’re going to call Gwyn.”

For a second, there was silence. Then:

“Gwyn the Hunter? Kidnapped Mark Gwyn?” Aline looked dubious at best. The events of the past few weeks had been so speedy, it was easy to forget how quickly they’d all happened.

“He’s on our side,” Mark said, absently. “Though he probably isn’t going to be happy about us misplacing Kieran. Turns out he’s super into tattooed Shadowhunter teachers.” The words sounded like they were coming from someplace else entirely. With his little sister’s corpse in his arms, Mark didn’t seem to be the most emotionally present. Still, Emma had to giggle, at him, and at Helen and Aline’s confusion, and at the whole situation. It was awful, it was all so awful. 

“It bet he’s really tired of hearing from us,” she said, as Diana’s Arrow came into view.

Julian was starting to come back to himself, starting to remember his instincts. “If we’re leaving Idris, we’ll want supplies. Money, weapons, clean clothes, food. We’ll need a sheet for Livvy’s body, before Tavvy sees her. I don’t want him getting scared.”

Kit stumbled into Emma and out of his reverie. Poor kid probably hadn’t seen a lot of death before. “I could probably keep an eye on Octavian and the babies,” he offered. “Since you guys are better at weapons and stuff than I am.”

“I’ll help,” Cristina cut in quickly, clearly not trusting Kit alone with three small children. “I think one of the Lightwoods is with them, we’ll need to distract them. I can do that too.”

Diana glanced around the empty street thoughtfully. Not all Idris houses were always occupied, especially in times like these. “There isn’t much in the way of supplies in the store itself, however I think under the circumstances I could borrow food from a few neighbours.”

“I can run back home and grab clothes for the little ones,” Aline said smartly, already eyeing the distance to the Penhallow townhouse “It’s not far, and if I wear a glamour I don’t think anyone will notice me.”

“Someone should go with you,” Helen insisted, taking her wife’s hand. It was an unspoken given that Helen herself couldn’t. That would be asking too much of the world. They’d had enough luck already

Emma volunteered quickly.

It was amazing, how fast Shadowhunter instincts, drilled in since childhood, took over in a crisis. There was no time for tears when you needed to survive. Only Kit was still crying, and he was doing it silently, holding onto Ty’s arm tightly like the other Blackthorn twin might disappear too.

 Ty wasn’t a good Shadowhunter. He was never going to be. It wasn’t in his bones, or his brain. There were many things exceptional about him, but the pieces of his mind primed to cope with a crisis weren’t very high on the list. He looked like a dead man walking, pale as the grave, grey eyes flat in his thin, empty face.

They’d all seen him have meltdowns before, loud and catastrophic. This was the quiet period afterwards, where all systems were on minimal power, his entire head trying to recuperate from something so groundshaking it had hurt him at his core. Dru was holding him lightly, in case he needed to not be touching anyone, because she knew a little better than Kit did.

Within fifteen minutes, the Lightwood-Banes had been sent away, they had bags packed up, and Tavvy was being consoled by Julian. Livvy’s body was laid out on Diana’s kitchen table, wrapped all in white.

Diana was upstairs, talking to Gwyn, (Privately, she had insisted) and while she was gone, Julian did a headcount. It was more complex than it had once been. 

Once it had gone, Emma, the twins, Dru, and Tavvy.

Tavvy and Dru, check, sobbing quietly on the couch with daggers and their knapsacks packed.

Emma, right next to him, a steadying presence, so solid he felt he might start orbiting around her.

The twins… at the table, more or less. One of them at it, head bowed, one of them on it, still as the grave.

Angel help them, Livia. Julian still couldn’t fully process it without his mind turning to thoughts of fire and blood and Annabel’s hapless destruction and the Cohort’s endless cruelty. That wasn’t helpful. Revenge didn’t keep the children safe.

There were more now too. There was Kit, standing over Ty and staring at thin air with a slightly alarmed expression, face working with unspoken words. Poor boy probably hadn’t seen a lot of deaths before, certainly not of someone his own age. Livvy had liked him so much too.

Mark and Helen were standing together, their stolen siblings returned to them too late, curly heads bowed together, talking fast with their hands. Aline was nearby, sharpening a sword. She looked reluctant to abandon her mother, but if Helen was going, Aline was going with her, and Helen would not be parted from them again. That was an unspoken certainty. Julian had lost two sisters and gotten one back and he would never let anyone take her away again.

Cristina was by the front window, on lookout duty and doing a very poor job of it, because she kept checking her phone. She was worried about Diego and the missing Kieran, Julian knew, but the chances of two people last seen disappearing together into a portal getting in touch via text seemed slim.

Emma’s hand felt like a brand on the skin of his arm when she touched him. “Jules, Diana is coming.”

She was, descending the stairs like a movie star in a crisp grey tunic, with solid battle leathers underneath. There was a bag slung over her shoulder, and she was looking around the shop with regret.

Almost everyone, except the out of it Kit and Ty, looked over at her.

“I talked to Gwyn,” she said simply, “He’ll meet us in Brocelind forest. We’re going to need horses.”

 

 

 

The meeting place decided on was one of the blighted spots Helen and Aline knew of but the Cohort probably didn’t, hidden from angelic magic, but therefore vulnerable. Going there was an act of sacrifice. It meant they had little power except that they made themselves. They were putting their trust in Gwyn, utterly, but they didn’t have a lot of other options.

Cristina and Emma had secured a half a dozen horses from a Clave outpost on the edge of the city, through a combination of clever lies and flat out theft, while everyone else snuck out between the demon towers. That was one of the advantages to all being Shadowhunters, more or less. The wards weren’t made with them in mind.

Leaving Livvy behind was unacceptable, so they wrapped her in winding sheets and Julian and Emma cradled her stiffening form between them. She was heavy in death, but not especially big, even for a fifteen year old. If she’d lived, she probably would have grown. Now she was frozen, five foot even, petite, and bloodless with the handle of the Mortal Sword still lodged in her chest. (Another reason why someone was going to come after them soon. Julian increasing suspected there was a coup going on, because there the streets were empty and there was a lot of noise coming from the Gard, but that could only distract everyone for so long.) Taavy couldn’t even look at her. Helen was holding him close, and he was clinging to her even though he only remembered her from phone calls and Christmas letters.

They rode, doubled up where they needed to be. Shadowhunter steeds were sturdier than the faerie kind, made to carry fully armed warriors. They could handle a few teenagers and some luggage, at least for a short voyage. Mark proved oddly terrible at handling skittish mortal horses, made of flesh and blood and requiring saddles and other cumbersome things, but most of them had some riding lessons.

It turned out it felt a lot less like running away if you did it on a horse, with your little brother in front of you, shaking with fear but refusing to say a thing because Shadowhunter children never cried out in a crisis.

Gwyn had brought his hunters with him to the blighted place and they took in the assembled group with some alarm.

There were mutters, some calls out to Mark (friendly and derogatory alike), and, as they dismounted, a steady count.

“Eleven!” one of the hunters finally said loudly, once they were all down. “Eleven shadowhunters, counting our own dear Blackthorn. Gwyn, Gwyn, Gwyn, what a sight you have brought to our eyes.”

“Eleven and a body,” another faerie clear voice corrected. Ty flinched and Emma’s hand went for Cortana before Mark restrained her.

“Nine and two of our own kind,” said someone more charitably, “That girl has the look of the Lady Nerissa, for I knew her well.” Now it was Helen’s turn to pause, shrink back.

Gwyn silenced them all with a wave of his hand and dismounted on the ash that passed for earth. The place seemed haunted, even more so since it was so close to Lake Lyn. As soon as they’d entered the circle of ruin, they’d all felt the same unsettling chill in their bones.

“Diana Wrayburn,” he said, softly, kissing her hand. “Mark Blackthorn. Where is Kieran?”

“We, uh…” Mark said, looking guilty and terrified. He and Cristina had both sent fire messages to Diego and Kieran before they’d left, both had the same loving worry on their faces. Kieran was a knot of a person (faerie) but the affection they felt for him was clear and real.

“When conflict broke out in the Hall of Accords, my cousin knew it would be blamed on the fair folk,” Cristina said quickly. “We think he tried to get Kieran to safety. They were seen leaving, but we haven’t been able to get in touch with them. We’re still trying to figure out where they went, but it’s difficult. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to speak with you.”

Gwyn considered her with his serious, bi-coloured eyes, one as pale as the day and the other inky as night. “And what could I do, little rose bush, that a Shadowhunter could not?”

“If you are worried about Kieran,” Cristina said carefully, “You could check the Rosales family home in Oaxaca. It is where Diego and Jaime grew up. It has sheltered the hadas before, perhaps he hoped it could now. I am sorry to say, we don’t have a lot of resources at the moment. We’re kind of…” she gestured at their state, the panicking horses at the edge of the ring of ruin, the tangle of children- Dru and Kit and Tavvy and Ty and Julian- sitting exhausted on the forest floor, watched over by Emma. Aline and Helen looked barely any better. They were adults, but they had spent most of their adulthood in a prison. Now they were just tired and holding onto each other.

“Annabel Blackthorn killed the Inquisitor,” Diana said bluntly. “She did so in front of the entire Council. She killed her own blood as well, the Blackthorns’ sister.” Raw grief bled from Diana’s voice, but she at least had the self control to keep talking. “After that… fears for Kieran’s safety weren’t unfounded on Diego Rosales part, if that was his motive. Frankly I’m not sure if it’s safe back there for Julian or the rest of the children, much less Mark or Helen.”

“Shadowhunter politics,” Gwyn said coldly, but he did seem sad. “One of your own children is dead and all you can do is threaten more of them. Though I wish I could lend you all my strength, I am not sure there is much aid I can render here, Lady Wrayburn. Would that I could take you all into the Hunt… but I suspect my hunters might object.”

There were mixed jeers from the hunters behind him, weighted with a healthy dose of fear. They did not take Gwyn lightly, but they were fair folk and that meant they tended towards a sort of organized anarchy, where opinions had weight.

“Besides, as frightening as Shadowhunters are, I do not think your gaggle of children would do well among our number.”

“Mark was bad enough!” a hunter shouted. Gwyn rolled his eyes, a surprisingly human gesture from a faerie lord.

“Hark, I cannot keep order among them now. I fear Emma Carstairs might destroy discipline utterly. So, what favour can I lend you that is within my means and does not contradict the interests of my Hunt, my lady?”

There were more mutters now, a general sense that this was more blatant favouritism than Gwyn had shown in centuries and it was fascinating to watch. Somewhere inside the mass of bodies and hooves and inhuman features, people were taking notes.

The Wild Hunt was fanning out as well, moving closer and closer to the huddle of the Blackthorns and company. One of them smiled toothily at Helen, who didn’t pause before snapping back with her dainty, pearly teeth. In the moonlight, her ears seemed even sharper. A faerie on a gazelle whistled appreciatively.

The horses were starting to spook in the presence of all these not-horses, and Emma had to go and flex her limited equestrian skills to tie them to some of the less sickly looking trees. As she did, a faerie man with broad shoulders and a beard full of moss sidled over her her.

“Art thou Emma Carstairs?” he asked. All of the fey had a gift for tongues, but he had a distinct accent. Scottish, maybe, or something broader.

“I art,” she said, shrugging her shoulders until the uneasy cold lifted someone from them. If this was going to be a fight, she wanted to go into it swinging.

“You bested the Unseelie King’s champion?”

“I did.” Emma confirmed uneasily.

He clapped her across the shoulders so hard she stumbled forward. “Good on ye, girlchild! He’s a levereter, indeed.”

She retreated, unsure if the endorsement of a suspicious faerie in the courts’ equivalent of a prison gang was a good thing or not. Having seen the Seelie and Unseelie, she was inclined to say it was.

When she returned to Julian and his pile of Blackthorns (and a still distracted Kit), Diana was just finishing up her negotiations.

“The Los Angeles Institute is abandoned,” she reported. “The Hunt will take us there and then take their leave.”

“Better than Uber,” Emma whispered, and Cristina smothered a giggle.

Julian stood, hefting Taavy onto his hip even though he was too big really to be carried. “Wait! Before we leave, we- we need to…”

He was looking at Livvy’s body, laid out in the green grass the bordered the place where death began.

“We should burn her,” Helen finished, saving her little brother again. “We should give her a proper Shadowhunter funeral.”

Diana didn’t look convinced. “I’m not sure we have the time-”

“No.”

Ty’s voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t used it in years.

“She was a warrior,” he told them firmly. “We have to burn her, now. Or else- or else-” Annabel’s haunted eyes lingered in their minds. The Black Book was missing, necromancy was a real and present threat.

Kit took his hand.

Gwyn coughed, politely. “I know little about Shadowhunter funerals,” he said, “But I agree. It does not do to leave the honorably fallen on the battlefield for long.”

It was settled.

 

 

 

It wasn’t fair, Emma thought, that they had to bury their Livvy so far from home. None of it was fair. She wanted to scream, for Julian, for Ty, for the little girl she’d taught how to throw knives.

They should have burned her on the beach by the Institute, they should have taken her back, but that was a variable they couldn’t afford. Better to do it here. 

Arthur hadn’t gotten a funeral with his family. The stupid Cohort had probably torched him in the backyard with barely an Ave Atque Vale for it. Andrew had been Forsaken, and the Clave had decided they shouldn’t give a proper funeral to him either. The Blackthorns didn’t deserve to go through that again.

The Hunt helped collect branches with a minimum of taunts. Helen and Aline took the body down the water, away from everyone else, and washed her. They came back with half the Mortal Sword and Livvy looking less bloody but still terribly, sickeningly dead. The white sheets stolen from Diana’s clung to her body, even after they’d been dried out and marked all over with runes for purification and burning and mourning.

There wasn’t the time for a proper ceremony, with white clothes and gold bands and runes sketched out. Mark and Julian and the Hunt built the pyre while Emma tried desperately to arrange Livia’s hair so she looked like a warrior who had fallen in battle and not a child in braids.

Ty was just staring. Dru had retreated, with a inconsolate Tavvy and Diana who seemed to be grieving in her own private way. Gwyn was with them, which was the only reason Emma wasn’t worrying. At some point he’d gone from an enemy to a stalwart ally.

Kit wasn’t looking at Livia’s body, but the air several feet behind Ty. He kept blinking away tears, but he was smiling. Emma thought maybe he was having an emotional crisis, but that was none of her business.

Julian came over from the edifice of wood being built just on the green side of the border between blight and Idris, where runes could be counted on to work. “It’s done as it’s going to be,” he said softly. He and Helen and Mark started to go to move her body, but Ty stopped them.

“A warrior is burned with a weapon,” he said steadily, tucking a knife between Livvy’s folded hands. He regarded his twin’s body for a second, looking at her blankly, like he couldn’t quite process what he was seeing. Then he leaned over, whispered something in her ear, and let his older siblings take her away.

The Wild Hunt wasn’t a traditional audience for a funeral, but it was clear they’d never seen a Shadowhunter one before and were behaving themselves out of curiosity, at least. Multicoloured, mismatched eyes, some glowing, some not, stared out at them from the woods.

Cristina had found wildflowers, Queen Anne’s Lace, mostly, for the bier in the living part of the woods. Livvy rested in a sea of lacy white, against which even her dead complexion had some tint. A double layer of sheets- only slightly pink with blood- covered up the ruin of her chest. Against that glimmered steel.

There were a lot of words you said at a Shadowhunter funeral, and then again there weren’t a lot at all. This wasn’t a Shadowhunter funeral though, it was a Blackthorn one.

For the third time that day, Helen took up her place as the eldest sibling, while Julian stood, helpless and shivering in Emma’s embrace. She stood up on tiptoes, kissed Livvy’s brow, and addressed the crowd.

“Most of you didn’t know my sister. I think, after so many years away from her, maybe I didn’t know my sister. You don’t need to know her to admire what she did. When her family was threatened, she was the first one forward. Older Shadowhunters shrank back, but she didn’t. She fought to protect the people she cared about, to protect the woman who stood with a sword in hand ready to kill, because she was family too. Livia Blackthorn was brave and she loved people so much. She died with the Mortal Sword in her chest.”

Helen held it up like a war trophy, shattered and shining. The Wild Hunt knew a good bit of theater when they were given it. They gasped appreciatively. Diana and Gwyn sighed in sync. Julian rocked back, holding Tavvy tight.

“She was fifteen. She liked lipgloss, and cute boys, and videos of kittens. She used to write me letters with pressed desert flowers in them and send Aline chapstick in the winter. Her name was Livia Blackthorn, she was brave, and she died.”

It was Mark who lit the pyre, when he got tired of the process of elimination. It went up with a dull whoomph of air being sucked in, and heat blasted everyone within ten feet. It was possible that Julian and Emma shouldn’t have put flammability runes on together.  

Julian did another headcount as they mounted up to go back to Los Angeles and relative safety. It was possible they’d have to barricade themselves in there, but at least it was home.

Emma was next to him, warm like a fire and twice as angry. He could feel it, pulsing through their parabatai bond, a development he was too tired to be worried about at the moment.

Tavvy was in between them, small and skinny and damp. Riding with the Hunt without letting him go was going to be an interesting challenge.

Aline and Helen were talking to faeries, and not yelling yet, which he was counting as a win. They’d put themselves in charge of the miscellaneous bags gathered before they left Diana’s house and they were piled up around them like a fortress.

Mark and Cristina were trying to call Kieran again, and were being hassled by the Hunt as they did so. Things seemed to get decidedly less polite when Gwyn’s back was turned and at the moment Gwyn was distracted with the Idris horses. Diana was with him. They were talking, quietly, and quite possibly holding hands in the rising darkness.

Dru had tried to talk to some Hunters, had fared poorly, and then retreated back to the safety of Helen’s shadow, since Helen seemed to scare most of them. They were definitely holding hands, with the desperation of sisters who had been separated and were now determined not to let go.

Kit and Ty were off by themselves, talking softly. Well, mostly Kit was talking. Ty was listening, with an odd expression on his face. It was somewhere between relief and disbelief. Kit really did make him act strangely.

Before Julian could puzzle that out further, and hand fell on his shoulder, heavy and gloved. It was Gwyn, and his face was… not unkind.   
  
“Young Blackthorn,” he said, “Gather your troops. We must away.”

He was a Shadowhunter. All he really knew how to do was troop gather.

As they left Idris, Livvy was a column of fire behind them, lighting up the whole night sky.

 

 


End file.
